Welcome fine readers of The Simple Dollar! Today, we’re going to cover my best practices for laptop shopping. I’ve never covered this topic in depth here before, though I have other places. Given the kindness of Drew over at TSD reaching out to me for feedback and advice on the topic for their own site, I figured it’s time to finally delve into the fullness of that topic here with a few pointers. Let’s get started!

Today’s post is almost going to be a guide in and of itself, bordering lightly on an Ask Daley. It has been in development for a long time, and it was inspired by a rather detailed set of questions by a reader/acquaintance through the MMM forums. A gentleman that we’ll refer to as K contacted me about internet and television services while living on the road, retired, out of an RV. He and his wife were considering a setup of over $215/month, was exploring options, and asked for feedback. Although this is targeted at RV enthusiasts, there’s plenty of clever and useful things here for anyone looking to go less minimalist on mobile services than what the guide recommends to pick and choose from without breaking the bank. The following is what came out of this exchange…

ATTENTION P’TEL/GIV CUSTOMERS!

Some of you may know already, and some of you this news might not apply to you currently, but it still might apply to someone you know. I recommended P’tel to a lot of people over the years, and the current news is sad and a little unexpected, but the news needs to be spread as P’tel is swamped as it is. The more who know and can pass on the info to others, the better, and the info needs to be consolidated down into a single location.

(or how to tell the difference between frugality and being cheap)

I got into a debate with a Republic Wireless customer recently. I know, people are sick of me talking about them; but this isn’t a post about Republic, it’s a post about math. Specifically, it’s a post about math defending why you should spend a little time learning about your communications technology, being willing to pay for what you actually need, and choosing the Cheap and Good options from the modified Engineer’s Iron Triangle instead of Cheap and Easy, especially when we’re talking about recurring monthly costs. We shall do this by simply examining the math behind $10.

A lot of buzz has been circulating around the MVNO and FIRE communities the past couple days since Google officially announced their Google Fi service. Of course, it’s been a mixed reception, but those of us in the know aren’t particularly moved by it. Since it’s on people’s minds, however, I’m going to *ahem* exploit the topic shamelessly and not only talk about it’s possible value, but also how to do nearly the same danged thing for about the same cost without buying a ghastly $650 Nexus 6. That’s right, we’re ‘skatin again!